


It was Alfred's idea

by EmarisLaughsManiacally



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alfred Pennyworth is the Best, Ballet, Dancing, Good Grandparent Alfred Pennyworth, hiplet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:21:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25169872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmarisLaughsManiacally/pseuds/EmarisLaughsManiacally
Summary: The batboys are getting ready to do a classical set of music for a charity event. Cass isn't familiar with instruments that don't cause pain, Alfred shows her she already has the skills to take the stage.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 25





	It was Alfred's idea

The batboys are getting ready to do a classical set of music for a charity event. 

______________________________________________

They're sweating for weeks about this by now, trying to squeeze in time from their night jobs, day lives, and just trying not to throw stands at each other. 

Tim's at the piano, Jason on a cello, Damian cradles a violin and Dick wields the viola while a few other musicians crowd behind them to round out the sound.

Duke has a variety of drums and chimes around him that look daunting but he's intently bobbing his head, keeping time with a tempo only the musicians can hear. 

Observing from across the room, Bruce nods slowly, work tablet forgotten in his lap. 

Eyes lighting on silver clips in Tim and Dick’s manes to keep back their hair, she wonders at their concentration and control. It had been a nightmare to find music that the four could play, Cass remembers as she leans through the door to the voluminous ballroom. 

The arguments had crossed into the dining room several times that once ended with a piccolo in the risotto and Damian banned from his instagram. He’d caught Jason and Tim screaming Vivaldi and Rossini at each other over a very done Duke who was shown stuffing half a peeled orange into his mouth.

Stephanie had called it a masterpiece. Twitter had called it free game and had responded with a flood of memes.

Cass smiles at her brothers as they move fluidly into their third piece, an intense movement of sound that thrums in her blood with a rapid beat. Her heart is already thumping with excitement and she locks eyes with Alfred who is conducting. 

His hands are still moving, like he’s coaxing magic, when he quirks a smile and gives her a nod.

They had discussed this, he and Cass, made a pact to guide the selection of music when the others argued. It’s a surprise and maybe a way that she could also participate in this as the only Wayne who never mastered a musical instrument.

She hesitates at the door, shaking out her hands and pushing up the sleeves of her hoodie as she listens. She backs up into the hall when the music drops, counts as it slowly rises faster and faster.

Maybe she’s not a musician but Cass is a creature of movement and she’s been practicing to this music since she guided their choices.

Cass rests a heel on the wall behind her and stills.

They’re nearing a peak when she explodes into the room, sprinting into a kneel that sends her gliding across the floor, hands high to announce her arrival.

Even with mouths agape, her brothers scarcely falter, covering their fellow musicians as some startle into wrong notes. The music twists and glides wildly and she lets herself fall into it.

Cass tenses her body almost like she’s a marionette and suddenly it’s like the music is pulling her strings. Up and away, mixing her ballet into the hip hop dips and bounces that Alfred had practiced with her. 

She’s a storm of movement in a cauldron of sound and there’s quiet glee under a wild smile.

She thinks that maybe this feeling was the spell that Alfred was casting.

It’s an aeon in terms of exertion, the fire of her dance fueled by sound but it feels like she’s scarcely blinked before the music slowly eases. It’s a quieting diminuendo that she expresses in a final swirling pirouette and a demure reverence for Alfred that ends in a bow alongside the music.

Cass is a statue in the awed silence.

Cass is marble chiseled by a sudden irrational fear that she’d overstepped.

But hands snap into applause and Bruce is up and clapping and laughing praise. ‘He loves it and he’s amazed and she’s amazing and he loves it.’ 

Her brothers are chittering excitedly with their fellow chairs while Jason is awkwardly clapping around his cello, whistling in delight.

She stays in place, eyes on the Conductor, nervous still and trying to catch her breath.

“Good enough for charity?”

Alfred steps forward and reaches out to ease her from the bow, smile proud and happy. 

“Mistress Cassandra, my dear girl. I took the liberty of adding your performance to the program weeks ago.”

She is _joy_ and her heart is radiant with it.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a vine


End file.
